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Four sleeps ’til summer & book giveaway

I’m pleased to announce the official Cottage Kids Countdown to the Great Canadian Summer. With only four sleeps until Canada Day (and summer!) now’s the time brush up on your Canadian trivia and enter win one of six books.

If your school lets out on June 30th, your first day of summer is also Canada Day this year. To commemorate these twin events in style, every day from now until July 1st I’ll be posting a morsel of Canadian trivia picked from a bunch of books celebrating the crazy things about this great country and our fellow Canadians. Check back each day this week for another Timbit—I mean, tidbit.

So, without further ado, here’s today’s Canadian trivia—a few things you should know about beavers (from Wacky Canada by Jeff Sinclair):

Beavers are real water babies. They can close their ears and nostrils, and they can close their mouths behind their front teeth. Their eyes have transparent eyelids. No wonder they can stay underwater for 15 minutes!

The beaver’s famous smile sports 4 large incisors. These mighty chompers never stop growing, but they grind each other down to size.

The beaver was the star of our very first postage stamp in 1851. Today it’s the star of our 5-cent coin.

Pretty amazing! See-through eyelids would be very cool…

Now for the book giveaway! I’m giving away six books (the books where I’ve found the bits of trivia you’ll be enjoying this week).For your chance to win one of the books all you have to do is tell me, in the comments thread below, about what you’re most looking forward to doing at your cottage on Canada Day, or for the rest of the summer. Can’t wait to jump in the lake? Have a campfire? Do you love fishing? Are you planning to build a fort? Tell us your story in a few lines. On Monday, I’ll do a random draw, from the pool of people who leave comments, to receive the books. You can enter as many times as you like for extra chances to win!

I’ll go first: I can’t wait to taste my first wild blueberry picked straight from the bush. Such a dark blue, and so tiny, but packed with flavour. You find one, and another, and, having found yourself in a good patch, you just can’t stop looking. I have spent whole afternoons bare feet clambering over Canadian Shield, with the hot sun on my back, in search of these miniature delicacies.